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36-year-old Jason Valdez wouldn't let a little thing like a SWAT team keep him from updating his Facebook status. During a 16 hour hostage stand-off in an Utah motel, Valdez made sure to update his Facebook page with things like, "Got a cute 'Hostage' huh?" He even got help from friends who posted the location of SWAT members outside.

Love to see the "helpful" comment-leavers charged with obstruction of justice. Had this guy been a little more deranged, he could have easily picked off said cops given the positions given out by his buddies.

Correction: Body armor rarely stops rifle rounds. Most body armor will protect against pistol bullets, shotgun pellets, or artillery/grenade fragments. Even most military body armor is relatively useless against rifle rounds - police armor, definitely not. SWAT, perhaps, has armor that can stop an AK47 round (a rather slow-moving round for a rifle), but a common 5.56mm or 5.45mm will go right through it. And you can forget about any of the heavier rounds - there is NOTHING that will save you from a (civilian-legal in the US).50BMG round, save being somewhere else while the shooting is going on.

Body armor's not magic. It can save you from a lot of stuff, the kind of stuff police and armies commonly encounter. Pistols - lightweight bullets, at relatively low velocity, and often designed to fragment on impact - are common and easy to protect from, since they have such low momentum to stop. Artillery kills mainly by fragments, which are also easily stopped. Same for grenades - movies and games massively understate the range on them: a fragmentation grenade can often kill someone half a football field away, if the tiny shards of metal fly in the right direction. But rifles? The most common light rifle round, 5.56x45mm, has 1800 joules of energy. The most common pistol round, 9x19mm, has 570-700 J, depending on make. That's a whole lot more energy to stop, and it's concentrated into a much smaller area (24mm^2 instead of 63mm^2).

Hello, There are some good information and bad information in your post.
1. SOFT body armor will not stop rifle rounds. Kevlar is virtually worthless (alone) against rifle rounds. Soft armor (assuming Level IIIA here) will stop most rounds up to and including.44 Magnum (Excluding a few rounds like 5.7mm and 7.62x25) rounds that are FMJ or JHP and of normal velocities. They will NOT stop anything steel cored.
2. SWAT and the military both employ Hard armor as well as soft armor. These are typically either steel plates or ceramic plates. They will either be rated for single impact or multiple impact and whether they are assisted panels or not (If they need to be assisted it means you HAVE to have a soft vest on under the plate or it will NOT stop a rifle round). These plates tend to ONLY cover a small portion of your body though, usually just your vitals as the plates are typically only 10x8 inches in size. (and youll typically have one in front and back)
3. A 7.62x39 round (The round used in the AK47) is actually MUCH harder to stop then your typical 5.56x45 (assuming it is an XM193 round [not steel cored]) round. It is a heavier round that does NOT fragment, however the wounding characteristics are not that great. The majority of the US military uses a XM193 round that fragments on impact making it easier to stop. The Russian 5.45 round is kind of weird and not a very effective round as its wounding method is to yaw inside its target, which means the temporary and permanent crush cavities are not spectacular, though it is decent at penetrating armor.
4. Grenades and Artillery actually try to kill with the concussive force (thats why the range is stated as being shorter) and fragmentation is the secondary wounding method. (If its going to throw chunks of deadly metal everywhere then you might as well capitalize on it.)

Correction -- XM193 denotes a QC rejected M193 round, which is a 55 grain 5.56mm FMJ ball round. It is no longer issued in the majority of brnaches/units The most common 5.56 round now is the M855 green tip -- 62 grain FMJ round with a steel core. Now sounds like M855A1 is the next large scale (minor gain) switch.

Take your 7.62mm AK round. Two rounds in that same diameter are very common for hunting:.308 Winchester (a.k.a. 7.62x51 NATO) and the.30-06 Springfield (a.k.a. 7.62x63). Both carry a heavier bullet with a higher velocity, and have far more impact energy (up to double).

While standard police armor will be easily penetrated by either, the modern military composite inserts will stop them, even a 30-06 with a steel penetrator core.

It's amazing how far armor has come, just 20 years ago an average hunting rifle

I am aware of the differences between soft armor and hard armor, as well as most of your other info (the 5.45 bit is new to me, though). I was simply trying to avoid needlessly complicating things. But thank you for providing more information for anyone who needs it.

You don't even need to go all the way up to the.50BMG, any standard full power hunting round will do. Think things like.30-06,.308,.303, 7.62x54r, 300 Winchester magnum. Regular police body armor won't stop things like the.223 (5.56x45), 7.62x39, or.30-30 which are all fairly common hunting round for things up to white tail deer. Even S.W.A.T. armor would have issues with some of those especially with multiple shots fired. Add to the mix shotgun slugs which even if they are stopped by the armor (very

The most common rifle round is NOT the 5.56. By FAR it is the.22. Seeing as how you were most likely referring to military rounds, you're still dead wrong; it's the 7.62 NATO. The last I read there were over 100 million ak47's in the world.

Body armor can stop the 5.56 as well as the 7.62 round with ceramic plates. I have been hit with a 7.62 round and while it left a huge black and blue spot on my back, knocked me down, and knocked the wind out of me, the vest did it's job and I am here today telling y

1).22 LR is generally considered a pistol round, even though it has "rifle" in the name.

2) HOW THE FUCK CAN YOU THINK THE AK47 USES 7.62mm NATO? DID YOU NOT PAY ATTENTION AT ALL TO THE PAST 65 YEARS OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS? DOES THE TERM "THE COLD WAR" MEAN NOTHING TO YOU?

3) There are two general types of body armor, "soft" and "hard". You were using "hard". Most police forces do not use that - "soft" is much cheaper, much easier to move in, and will still stop 99% of the stuff police have to deal w

It can [wikipedia.org], but certainly not likely. At those distances the frag pattern is so large, the likelihood of purposely hitting someone is tiny. But, random targets do get hit.

As a side note, with so many references readily available, people like you who are both too stupid to use Google and too lazy to even try, only validate just how bad humanity has become. The world at your finger tips and you're too stupid and lazy to use it.

Nope. Grenades have about 20m worth of killing in them. Sure, it's possible you could get a random fragment through your neck 50 yards away, but from that distance I wouldn't even worry about covering my man sausage from the blast.

Unless you're in confined quarters (room, foxhole, vehicle) grenades aren't that much of a threat. Hell, we just awarded the MoH to a soldier who had one blow up less than two feet from his hand and all he lost was the hand. (that incident was clearly the exception, not the ru

Had you read more than the first thirteen words on the Wikipedia article, you would have learned that body armor of that type is used almost exclusively by the military. Last I checked, small-town SWAT doesn't normally go out with $1500 in body armor plates.

Just googled them, they cost less than $400. SAPI plates run about 290, and the newer polyethelene ones cost between 400 and 600. You can get the full package (plates, with lv III-a vest) for around 700 online.

Also, small towns don't usually have swat teams, and those that do, have swat team members who wear ceramic plates. Would YOU spend $800 on plates for your vest if it meant the difference between coming home at night or dying in someone's front yard? Most cops aren't as stupid as you think, and th

It's... complicated. I believe the general opinion is that, for general penetration (ie. bricks, brush, etc.), 7.62x39mm will match or outperform the newer 5.56mm/5.45mm rounds. But for body armor specifically designed to stop bullets, the newer rounds significantly outperform.

Of course, my info is coming from US DoD information, so it could be biased.

In any case, against common police-type body armor, either one will work just fine.

The article does mention that the police were considering that. It sounded like there was only one comment about the swat team being in the bushes. I guess it depends on whether the prosecutor thinks it's important to send a message.

It's worth noting that the article makes it sound like the guy shot himself in the chest to try to commit suicide. The police say they didn't fire their gun, but also said that he could face charges for "firing his handgun at police." I suppose he may have been shooting a

The article made it sound like he was going to get his girlfriend out of the room at one point, but the police tried to use that as an opportunity to storm in. In response, he fired a couple of shots and retreated (with his girlfriend) back to the room. The question is whether those shots were directed at the police, or were just warning shots over their heads. Either way, the police are going to charge him with firing on them afterwards.I suspect they were warning shots. If he had actually fired at them, I

The question is whether those shots were directed at the police, or were just warning shots over their heads.

"Warning shots" still count as a shot towards the individual, and are NEVER justified. Even for a person legally carrying a firearm and acting in self defense, if it comes time to shoot, you're supposed to aim to hit. Warning shots even in such a situation will, at best, tend to draw an "Illegal discharge of a firearm." charge. Simple reason being that those bullets go somewhere. You are responsible for them. If you're not shooting at a specified target with intentions to hit it then you have no damned business putting those bullets into motion in the first place, as you've just upped the possibility greatly of striking an innocent bystander.

This is why I hate the whole concept of warning shots, or brandishing a weapon. It is a great way to get someone hurt or killed.

I try to explain to people who don't know much about guns that I don't believe in accidental shooting in 99.99% of cases because is actually negligence. The remaining few are truly accidental shooting even once I had a firearm accidentally discharge, but because it is pointed down nothing bad happened other than the dirt got shot. The way it happened was some friends and I were shooting empty pop cans up north and ran the SKS out of ammo. When empty the bold is automatically held open so you can put more ammo in using a stripper clip. I put the safety on, reloaded, and pulled the bold back to close it. We the bolt closed it chambered a round (like it should), but because we had freezing rain (it was only about 25F out side) the firing pin froze forward and struck the primer discharging the round even with the safety on. This only proves why you should only point firearms at things you intend to shoot (or in this case a safe direction).

You don't get to fire warning shorts toward someone and say it's something other than firing at them. To be a warning shot, it must have been shot in their direction. The danger with shooting a gun, in any direction, in a motel really shouldn't need to be explained to anyone.

So, if I point the gun at an object and shoot it, that object being my target or not is a matter of semantics.

There's a large difference between shooting it in some known direction vs shooting it wildly. Yes, both are not the best of ideas, but you're comparing 'driving recklessly' to 'driving 200mph down the shoulder in rush hour traffic'

"Your Honor, I fired shots to keep police away when they were trying to serve me with a felony warrant. But yo, check it out, they was just WARNING shots, I wasn't aiming at the police, just wanted to let them know that I didn't want them to come any closer."

When somebody's pointing a weapon in your direction and pulling the trigger, they're shooting at you. The fact that he has bad aim and was probably firing blind / wildly doesn't mean a thing, l

I really doubt "hey man, they are on the roof" is going to be very helpful, unless...

Actually, it is.

You then know they are on the roof, so now you know you -must- watch the stairs, where before you were uncertain. That can make all the difference, and get people killed. Another example: Hear a noise upstairs? Well, before you might be alarmed by it, depending on what you think you heard. Well, now they are really paying attention...

Whether the hostage taker is skilled enough to take out a SWAT member with one shot or multiple shots, it does not address whether the hostage taker was helped by the FaceBook poster. By locating the policeman, it still is considered aiding and abetting.

I especially love the picture of "3 people like this" when he talks about scaring off the police with gun shots.

This is why Facebook needs a dislike button or something else, because it makes people look like animals for "Liking" bad news. Most of the time, people hit "Like" to vote up news, not to agree with it.

What if the press were there with video cameras and he was watching his TV and thus obtained information about the location of police? Should the journalists then go to jail? Or is it only OK when a journalist does it? I'm not sure myself, but I do think the issue is not so simple as you make it out to be.

The cops can see when the news cameras are out there, and they generally keep them far enough out of the thick of things that their tactical positions can't be given away, for that very reason, unless they WANT the guy to know he's covered every which way as a negotiation tactic.

Let me get this straight - are you implying that somehow these morons on facebook had more information on the SWAT team's whereabouts than the journalists and were able to convey that information in twitter-sized morsels more effectively than a 1080i newscast?

What if the guy was across the street. What if he was on a 2-way radio instead of Facebook. What if we referred to him as a "spotter" instead of a "commenter"? Again, still not as black and white, but I'd say intent plays a huge roll in the legality of the situation. He was directly communicating with the hostage taker and trying to help him stay one step ahead of the police. I'd say that falls squarely under aiding and abetting.

I dunno. Then we start charging people for saying "hey, the police are trying to bust you" or "hey, there's a speed trap up ahead."

Sharing tactical information that can be publicly seen should *not* be a crime. It quickly turns into a complete police state (if it hasn't already). Disclosing the positions of police officers with no malice aforethought does not attempted murder make.

You've heard the expression 'loose lips sink ships?' Well, leaking tactical information -during- the operation gets people killed. People doing their job, which is (supposedly) to protect and serve the public.

I agree that making it an outright crime is not a nice thing, but what else can you do!? Clearly you can't expect people to use their brains.

I hope that happens. Helping someone like this during an armed hostage taking should cause you to get charged with aiding and abetting. Not to mention the slew of other conspiracy charges that you brought up.

After all, the assistance put the woman's life in danger. What if he flipped out because of it and killed or otherwise hurt her? It absolutely put the SWAT officer's life in danger. Not to mention it probably served to elongate the whole ordeal.

Since I am not a LEO (but work with them), I can say that this is something they all thing about. Now, they don't often cut the power anymore, but they do run what the LEO's I work with call a "Trap and Trace" (I know, wrong term, but that's what they call it), which kills the data/SMS connections and forwards all outbound calls to a special hostage negotiator phone number. It works pretty damn well all things considered. At one convention I attended a vendor demoed a local-area cell jammer, which the FB

I'm sorry, no matter how bad that hostage taker is, that seems excessive. Imagine I'm coming over to my friends's apartment and I see a bunch of police around. I check facebook and my friend has an update, "in a bit of a bind lol".

Now, note that's a bit ambiguous -- maybe he means he's the target, maybe it just means he can't leave his pad because the police are going after someone nearby.

So I reply to his update with, "yeah, what's going on, man? There are SWAT dudes all over the front lot?"

Heck, I know I joke with my friends (who are not the criminal type) about them being watched by someone in the bushes. I can't pick out an exact time, but when they've "broken" minor laws and told me about it, I usually include the phrase: "The police just pulled up outside!" or something on that order.

There is no reason to be hypothetical, and there was no ambiguity - why don't you RTFA first?

His friend REPLIED to his post about taking a hostage, for chrissakes! He had already bragged about shooting at the police, and claimed that police actions might jeopardize her life. The whole thing had been televised for hours, and the SWAT team was present. And his friend's comment was "gunner in the bushes, keep your head down".

Anyway, of course I agree they will have establish intent, but considering the situ

That's the problem with the law -- you cannot qualify "...in the process of committing a crime" because that implies intent (and someone could claim that they were misconstrued). So, the law would effectively framed such that giving someone information to help them is a crime, qualifying the nature of the information (but never the situation). And then, you're screwed.

That's the problem with the law -- you cannot qualify "...in the process of committing a crime" because that implies intent (and someone could claim that they were misconstrued). So, the law would effectively framed such that giving someone information to help them is a crime, qualifying the nature of the information (but never the situation). And then, you're screwed.

are you some kind of lawyer?

I grant that some crimes are not apparent; but some crimes are blatantly obvious.Obviously you should not be able to get convicted of helping in a crime if the person committing the crime is not convicted, but if the person is convicted of a crime and you helped them in carrying out the crime, then you should go to jail too.

i.e.If someone tells a man coming out of the back door of a bank carrying a large sack, "hey don't go that way, there are cops there" when he starts to leave,

The "if I don't make it out of here alive" comment, the use of such a public forum, shooting at the cops and the eventual self-inflicted shot to the chest make me think he was trying "suicide by police".

$100 says that Facebook will shortly come out with an "emergency channel" that police and other emergency crews can use to "break in" and talk to anyone, regardless of friend status.

Suicide by cop is almost always done without an effective (as in real, or loaded) weapon. And more to the point, people who choose that route get the cops to shoot them, rather than shooting themselves; that's the whole point of it. So this is a little more of a case of really bad project planning and failing to do one's requirements analysis up front.

Hence why the person used the phrase "Trying", shooting himself may have been the fallback plan, since getting caught by the police will certainly make actually committing suicide significantly harder, less quick etc... and actually having an unloaded weapon I would imagine would between taking away a backup plan, and being less effective (cops are more likely to fire at you if you fire the first shot). But yes obviously whether attempted or not, he failed, but did not get the worse possible outcome (worse

$100 says that Facebook will shortly come out with an "emergency channel" that police and other emergency crews can use to "break in" and talk to anyone, regardless of friend status.

And would that be such a bad thing? At least if it comes to an emergency, which leaves you trapped somewhere (say, an earthquake traps you in the rubble), they can give you instructions, such as first aid, survival, and possibly even zero in on your position based on what you tell them you see and hear.

Well from what I understand of Facebook privacy, you can set it to only allow people you have set as friends to see your profile. This feature would presumably allow law enforcement to override this requirement and talk to you. I suppose if this feature could access to the rest of your profile and only allows exclusive 2-way chat with law enforcement it would be fine.

FTFY. Our alien overlord-wannabees will get some details right on their giant mecha robot imitation Michael Jackson, like the single glove and holding the grandchild out the window, but just because they've walked on the moon doesn't mean they'll be able to do the moonwalk credibly.

are the comments by people with a grudge to settle against the police (probably for their own bad behavior they won't own up to) try to use cases like this as a proxy for their grudge: the hostage taker is an innocent lamb whose actions are perfectly understandable, caused by the police, and the police are vicious thugs out to shoot random people any chance they get

Are his friends who pointed out the position of SWAT team members really obstructing justice? Do civilians have the right to report on any police actions they observe under the auspices of the 1st amendment?

I'd love to see this decided and define the bounds for silliness like ticketing people who flash headlights as they pass speed traps. Or, laws against video taping cops.

I can assure you rape is often very justified. In fact just this morning on my way to work I saw a bulldozer raping an uneven plot of land that would soon become a baseball field for minors in the area.

He's taking hostages, shooting at cops, about to be taken out by a SWAT team, but he's working hard to increase his social network before he dies.

maybe if he paid a little more attention to the important things in life, like how ridiculous he looks in his pimp car, and what his poor mother must think about his reckless behavior; he might not have gotten himself in this situation in the first place.